The Signalnoise Mobile HQ is still set up on the parents’ kitchen table as I enjoy some time home over the holidays.

While I was messing around on the web I came across this fine image and had to post it up for all to enjoy. A real beauty, look at those colours. I came across this on some random Tumblr somewhere in the ether. And like the typical Tumblr toilet, I couldn’t locate the source or original creator. C’mon people, maintain those sources for morons like me!

Hope you’re all enjoying some down time and eating some turkey, wherever you may be.

I’m currently parked on my parents kitchen table and will be working from here on and off over the next week or so. Just a small note to send out a big Happy Holidays to everyone. Hope you all have a great and safe Christmas!

I’ve been wrapped up in other things over the last while and haven’t had the chance to play around with some new work, so this weekend I blocked out some time to explore something new. Even though I draw a lot and every poster starts with the sketchbook, very rarely do my drawings end up anywhere near the final piece. So this time I wanted to physically draw something, scan it, and recreate all the lines in Illustrator. And who better to draw than Snake Plissken?

This was an experiment to see how I could change the vibe of my work and maybe develop a new method of working and a different aesthetic. This certainly has a Mike Mignola vibe as well. I’ve been a fan of Mike’s Hellboy work for over a decade and I learned a lot about using light and shadow from him. This Snake piece definitely leans on his style a bit. You can see above the finished piece after creating all my vectors and adding texturing in Photoshop, as well as my drawing. I didn’t clean up the drawing at all so you can see the ink work.

I had a lot of fun working on this one, definitely something I’m going to explore further… maybe for my next full movie poster.

Like a lot of movie poster designers, I watch a lot of releases online to see what my favorite companies and artists are up to. I love this scene that still really feels like the wild west, where all these rascals are dreaming up new ways to portray their favorite movies in the screen-printed form. And like many, I enjoy watching new and upcoming Mondo releases. I was thrilled to see a full-on art show featuring the work of Australian-based art duo WE BUY YOUR KIDS.

I was captivated by their WRATH OF KHAN poster (seen above) earlier this year and found myself constantly hunting down the image online to “have another look”. So arty and psychedelic and weird. But the biggest reason I enjoy it is because it looks nothing like other Mondo releases. Don’t get me wrong, I love the work of Moss and Taylor and Ansin… but this was such a departure. So strange and amazing.

When images started surfacing from the WE BUY YOUR KIDS art show, I knew a blog post was in order. They dropped a few posters online yesterday and I managed to nab a CONAN which I’m pretty stoked about. Mondo tends to sell out of posters in seconds, but this drop took a little more time. Bit slower than usual. I like that. It’s by no means a sign that this is of lesser quality than other Mondo releases, but rather it’s straight up different and out there. It’s something new, and I love that.

WE BUY YOUR KIDS is one of my favorite new movie poster artists, right up there with that Jay Shaw maniac. While everyone is mimicking the work of already popular artists in hopes of success, it’s really refreshing to have something fly in from left field.

Maybe they’re the design equivalent of “the cool band nobody knows about yet”. I dunno, but I look forward to seeing more WBYK posters in the future.

About

James White is a visual artist, designer and speaker living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. He makes posters and all kinds of cool stuff. Read more